


The Falcone Factor

by remymorton



Series: Enigma [2]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dog - Freeform, Established Relationship, Fanart, Jealousy, M/M, Rubik's Cube, tags are still hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26952934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remymorton/pseuds/remymorton
Summary: "So, you're Oswald's newest toy.""Um ... yes ... Edward, my name is Edward Nygma." he said and realized moments later that he had not even denied the fact that he had been called Oswald's property.Or, after two months of dating, an unexpected factor appears.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot & Martin, Oswald Cobblepot & Sofia Falcone, Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma
Series: Enigma [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966780
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	The Falcone Factor

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of my previous Blind Date Enigma fic. When I was working on the first part, I had ideas I couldn’t write into, so over time it became a second part.
> 
> It would be advisable to read that first part so this sequel can be somewhat understood. (Although it is not a guarantee, but ... Thanks to everyone who still tries and succeeds.)

Ed didn’t even think that a few months earlier, thanks to fate and his cousins, he had a chance to meet an amazing man, like Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot.

Maybe even luck played a part that night.

Given that he wouldn’t have even dated Oswald on that Valentine’s Day, yes, the luck was a very important factor.

The next day, when he called the man and asked him a meeting, he hoped when they would finally face each other, he could ask him why he had not told the truth, even at the end of the evening when they were waiting in front of the restaurant.

But when he saw him, he didn't.

Maybe because Oswald looked shy or because he was just as attractive in daylight or ... it didn’t matter at all that it was all due to a coincidence.

He decided.

He walked firmly to Oswald and grabbed his expensive coat and yanked him to himself. He kissed him. At least in part, because he missed a bit of purpose — when his boots slipped on the icy ground — and their teeth clattered instead.

Ed immediately let him go and stepped back. He felt himself blush with shame.

_"It's good that you didn't hit his head. A broken tooth is definitely more pleasant than a concussion."_

His inner voice comforted him in a particular way.

He glanced at Oswald in fear, who had just taken his hand from his mouth. Fortunately, he was unharmed.

_"Not like your ego."_

True.

"Let me try it now." Oswald said, pulling Edward to him with slower, cautious movements, as if to give him time to protest if he didn't want what was coming.

It was a ridiculous assumption and the last thought in Ed's mind before Oswald's lips touched his.

Afterwards, it felt like a firecracker had been blown up in his head.

And now, two months after their first kiss — which has followed a lot since then — Oswald called him over to spend the day together. He was just dressing Martín upstairs while Ed waited in the living room. A part of him would have been happy to help, but another was aloof because he didn’t have much experience with young children after all. Only with the bored-looking, acne-prone young adults who sweated blood yesterday when Ed announced he was writting a test with them.

The few times Oswald allowed to him to held Martín, he tried his best to handle the baby, who was incredibly fragile. Oswald chuckled in amusement and told him he held Martín, like he was a bubble.

"So, you're Oswald's newest toy."

Now, however, he would have been happy to be upstairs, next to Oswald. Away from this.

Ed swallowed nervously and looked at the woman in front of him. Who took a seat opposite to him on the couch, in Oswald's living room. There was nothing unusual about her posture, but she looked like a viper who was happy to play with her prey. Often.

"Um ... yes ... Edward, my name is Edward Nygma." he said and realized moments later that he had not even denied the fact that he had been called Oswald's property.

"I know." she replied, loosely placing the crystal glass on the glass table between them, leaving a remnant of a poisonous expensive whiskey. "And you know who I am?"

Yes, Ed wanted to say.

Instead, he just nodded and got a frosty smile in return.

Oswald once showed a picture and told quite a few things about her, by which, Ed’s parable of the viper completely took its place.

Sofia Falcone.

She is the head of a criminal organization previously run by Oswald. Ed found it a little harder to digest the man's previous lifestyle, but he did not convict Oswald of his previous "work." Not a little. He just never thought he was going to meet a real underworld leader. Ever.

The other gangs were all grouped under the umbrella of Oswald, who ruled over them with an excellent sense. Oswald's power was very extensive, he had no competitors who could take up the fight with him. But he had plenty of enemies, those who wanted to see him dead, and innumerable rivals — who longed for what the Cobblepot empire ruled.

Oswald tread anyone who posed a threat to him.

Almost everyone, except one.

Sofia didn't want to take what Oswald's, by force - she wouldn't have had much of a chance anyway, after her father denied her family inheritance - she was more cunning than that. She offered a deal instead. An irresistible deal.

And the subject of the bargain was an heir in exchange for the man’s position. Oswald agreed.

Nine months later, a new leader took over the empire, after a week Martín was born.

So, who sat opposite Ed was none other than the ruler of the underworld, who commanded people who would cut or break the other’s neck without a hitch.

Oh, and she was Martín's mother, too.

"Tell me, Ed, how much money are you willing to walk out the front door and out of Oswald's life?" Sofia asked in an emotionless voice, her eyes looked over Ed's shoulder for a moment at a specific point. "Forever."

"What?"

"One hundred? Two hundred?"

She tried to bribe Ed as calmly as if it had been the most mundane thing in the world.

"You think I'm some kind of gold digger you can buy it for $ 100?!" Ed's voice got a little sharper because he simply thought it ridiculous to even assume he would betray Oswald.

Sofia snorted amusedly and reached for her glass. "I was talking about one hundred thousand dollars." she answered and drank the rest of her drink. Then she slapped the empty glass on the table, Ed twitched at the sound. "For starters."

"I'm not ..."

"I can go higher. Just tell me how much."

Ed's shock began to turn into anger, quickly. He would have preferred to strangle her.

"Everyone has a price. How much does yours start?"

They were separated only by a low, glass table. There was a minimum distance of three meters between them. If he was nimble enough, he could easily grab the other one and ...

"Are you done?"

Oswald's cool voice managed to penetrate Ed's dark thoughts. Just like the sunlight in the overcast sky.

He entered the living room through the door behind Ed, his cane in one hand and Martín in the other, hugging him tightly. Followed closely by Martín's dog.

Ed's breath caught. As always, Oswald electrified the room when he entered somewhere. Of course, it was just Ed’s humble opinion, which he stuck to. His sleeves of the shirt were folded up, leaving his forearms free. And his blue tie matched his eyes perfectly, which he highlighted only slightly today, with an eyeliner. Martín, held in his arms, also had a blue one-piece, which also had a hooded part with two small, blunt ears on it. It was adorable as he drilled his tiny head to his father's neck.

"We're just talking." Sofia's smile was empty.

"The way you do, it is more of an insult." Oswald told her and he took such a close seat next to Ed on the couch, it was enough to lean to the right side a little, and he had already touched the taller man.

His proximity cleared Ed's head.

It was another quality of Oswald that Ed loved him for. He was able to reassure him, almost immediately. So far, only Isabella and Kristen have been able to do that. He always thought it was some kind of family thing. After all, Lee wasn't able to do it when they were together. Quarrels during their marriage were not uncommon. It was almost a daily routine.

Sofia shrugged. "It's better to know in the beginning what you let into your house." she said and her eyes wandered from Ed to Oswald. "Or into your heart."

Oswald's mouth twitched and then he smiled. Cruelly.

"If we are already on the subject, who let you in?"

Edward hadn't seen that smile on Oswald's face many times, just once, when Oswald told him pieces about his past. He knew it wasn't quite the Oswald next to him, with whom they planned to spend the day in threes. Who blushed after their first kiss. With whom it was so easy to laugh.

This Oswald was dangerous, wild and unpredictable.

And Ed loved him too.

He loved every part of Oswald.

"One of your bodyguards. They all look the same. Maybe you could change that. Nameplates or something." Sofia waved, but she felt the other's mood change. "He had an orange and gray striped tie."

Oswald turned to Ed and carefully handed him Martín. He quickly snuggled up to Ed, who locked the little boy in his arms and the dog settled straight on his shoes.

Then Oswald pulled out his phone. The called picked up on the second ring.

"Lawrence." he began, his voice sounded strong and before the person at the end of the line had a chance, he continued. "You're fired. And if I find you here five minutes later, you're not going to leave on your feet. Understand?"

Then, not waiting for an answer, he pushed out the call. But he's not done yet.

"Gabe!"

The said bodyguard appeared almost immediately.

"Notify me if Lawrence is still on the property one second after five minutes."

"Yes Boss." the bodyguard replied and disappeared. The noise of his receding footsteps quickly died away.

Yes, Ed loved this side too.

Sofia stood up, then approached Oswald with slow steps. The tapping on the heel of her shoe was as unsettling, as the look she used to measure the man all along, which wasn't emotionless at all now. Ed didn't like the way she looked at Oswald. There was something disturbing about it, that made him feel like a thorn was growing in his throat. He would have preferred to barricade Oswald from her.

"I see, it's still in your blood." she started and stopped right in front of Oswald. Close, too close, according to Ed, as he tried to reassure Martín, who was squirming in his arms.

“Nyah!"

Sofia glanced at Ed and Martín, then - who knows for what purpose - reached out to them but Oswald caught her wrist.

"What a possessor." she remarked. "Seems the family life is good for you."

"What do you want, Sofia?"

"I just wanted to see if my little gift still ..." she didn't finish the sentence when Oswald suddenly growled. He stood up, forcing her one step back.

"Try again." his voice indicated impatience. "And if you refer to my son once more as if he were an object, you're going to leave without your tongue from here. Don't think that because I left the underworld there, I'm harmless." and then he let go of her wrist. There were red fingerprints on her skin.

"If that were the case, I weren't here either." she slowly stroked her injured wrist. "You know, all that is missing is cigar smoke and blood from your hand and I think we are in Europe again."

Ed's breath caught.

Sofia carelessly threw back her hair, then continued.

"It would be a business thing. In private."

Oswald grinned smugly at this.

"Did you screw up?"

"No! Just things happened and I thought it wouldn't hurt to have an opinion ..."

"An opinion? Really? You flew across the ocean, broke into my home uninvited, drank my whiskey and tried to bribe Edward because you needed an opinion ...?"

"Your opinion." Sofia growled and more than that she refused to admit that she needed some help.

"How arrogant that woman is!"

"..."

"And her behavior was so shameless!"

"..."

"She thought that she suddenly appears in a short dress, a tacky shoe and Oswald immediately rushes and helps her?"

"..."

Martín continued to play silently, not paying attention to Ed, who was torn apart by what happened.

_"Well, that's what happened after all, isn't it?"_

Ed got his head sideways angrily as his cheekily grinning counterpart spoke beside him.

"Shut up!" Ed hissed quieter because he didn't want Martín to learn something like that from him. Although a small child might not find a person talking to himself strange, but he still did not want to advertise that this was the case with him. Anyway, at this age they are like sponges, absorbing everything around them.

The little boy was playing with builder's block on the rug in front of him - maybe he was trying to build a castle, but it always fell down. Thanks to the dog, who was too excited around the child. Ed helped him a little in the rebuild.

 _"Oswald has been alone in his workroom with that woman - who gave him this little man - for at least half an hour."_ he reminded Ed and pooked at Martín, who took a yellow block.

Ed sighed, he couldn't deny, that was true.

While Oswald was negotiating a deal with Sofia Falcon or whatever they did, he was here, in Martín’s playroom, where there were far more toys than the little boy was playing with.

And last but not least, he felt like a kid, whom being sent out of the room while the adults were talking.

Don’t get him wrong, Edward was happy with Martín. He loved him too and he was sure that Martín had become accustomed to his presence over the months. The boy was much smarter than his age. He was not loud and he didn’t even drool like most little kids, which Ed appreciated. And the fact that Oswald dared to entrust his only child without question, revealed an incredible amount of trust, which also went well for him.

He watched wordlessly for a while as the block castle rebuilt, then reluctantly spoke to his counterpart.

"I know what you're aiming for, but there's no question. He's not like that."

The grin disappeared from the another Ed's face. _"Are you sure? This would not be the first time you were wrong about something like this."_

"Yes, he never ...." he was unable to complete the sentence. Instead, he reached up and adjusted his glasses only to give some purpose to his trembling hand.

 _"You know I only talking about it because it's in your head."_ he said. _"Sometimes you seem to forget that I'm your part. I know exactly what's on your mind. Always."_

That was ... true.

_"And now, you think Falcone would be able to seduce him."_

"I saw how she looked at him, after Oswald got a little ... eh, wilder." Ed snapped. It was incidental that this made him a little feverish.

They had only been together for a little over two months - which is not a long time, he knows - but he was in love — of course, he hadn't said it out loud to Oswald yet — and he suspected that Oswald's feelings weren't indifferent to him either. Given that the man was kind to him, caring and devoted. He was happy. Very. He didn't even know what to do if it broke to pieces, because ...

_"You're jealous."_

Ed sighed resignedly and he bowed his head. This feeling was not very familiar to him - not even during his marriage, no matter how it ended — nor was welcomed. Especially when it involved questioning himself and Oswald and their relationship.

"Wonderful. Oswald must be longs for a jealous partner who doesn't trust him about that he can keep his pants up if his child's mother moves on him." he mumbled, then a moment later scolded himself for the thought. It was too raw, too strong, too ...

He raised his head.

"Is that you?" he asked in shock and now looked at the inner voice with a different eye, who quickly turned his head in the other direction. "You amplified my feelings? Why did you do it? I almost attacked that woman."

Another Ed reluctantly turned back. _"As I mentioned, you forget I'm your part. When you're happy or sad or whatever, that doesn’t mean I have to feel that way, but when we feel exactly the same, then the feeling intensifies. It's like double experience."_

"So when I planned to strangle Sofia Falcone, it was so intense because ..."

_"Because I wanted the same thing."_

Ed pondered this as he recalled some earlier things.

" When did you care about anything that was related to me? At best, you handed out unsolicited, mocking advice. We never agreed on almost anything, yet now why do you care ..." Ed's voice trailed off.

In the end, he came to a single conclusion.

"You are in love with Oswald too."

He looked at the other to see what he was reacting to, but inner Ed was no longer there.

Instead, a red cube flew toward him.

"Au!"

Martín hit him in the head.

Oswald was finally relieved when Sofia left his home and when she left the continent he would be very happy about it. That woman always brought out the worst in him, the Oswald, who was the lord of the underworld at the time. It was no different now. But unfortunately, it happened before Edward.

He always tried to moderate himself near the man. He wanted Edward to experience only his positive side. Most of the time he succeeded. As he made his way to the playroom, he hoped he wouldn't scare the other man with his behavior.

Now, he'd rather have smoked a cigarette ... or two. Or even a box. But near Martín, he tried to keep smoking to a minimum.

He reached the door of the Martín's playroom, from which sounds filtered out.

" ... you see, it was invented by a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture, Ernő Rubik. It was originally called the Magic Cube, and it wasn’t really made as a toy at first, but many inventions are a coincidence anyway ..."

He opened quietly into the room and saw Edward half-leaning on a plush toy, with Martín sitting on his stomach and nibbled a Rubik's Cube. It seemed, Edward told him the story of the cube.

But when they looked at each other, Ed fell silent.

Oswald closed the door behind him and walked over to them, then, taking care of his ankles, settled next to Ed. He stroked Martín's head and put his cane behind him, not wanting the dog to chew it. Ridiculous, but the monster still didn't have a name, but he began to suspect that Martín simply named it Dog.

None of them said anything, they just watched silently as Martín rubbed his baby's teeth on the Rubik's Cube, then ...

"She's left."

"Hm."

Oswald glanced at Ed from the corner of his eye, who bit his lower lip. He knew it was a back-up act, as a result to get rid of gritting of teeth. Which is the result of his tension.

Maybe Ed was tense because he didn't know how to tell him he wanted to break up? Was he afraid of how Oswald would have reacted? That, he too will leave without a limb? Like Lawrence, who wasn't fast enough.

Was that what he thought of him?

"Edward, say something." Oswald asked and he was so calm on the outside that it was in stark contrast to the inside. Meanwhile, he fiddled with one arm of the plush toy — it didn't even have the another arm because Martín had torn it off before. Her grandmother bought him this strange toy as a gift for his first birthday. Oswald thought it would cause his son nightmares, but Martín loved this strange, blue something.

Ed took a deep breath.

"I'm jealous." he finally said.

"Thank God."

"What?"

"I thought you were scared of me for what happened in the living room." Oswald sighed. "That I successfully ruined the relationship between the two of us.

"Never." Ed replied so firmly. Oswald smiled and took Ed's hand, then lifted it and breathed a kiss on it. Indicating that he was touched by the other's words. Ed smiled too, but a moment later it faded from his face when Oswald asked why he was jealous. The answer became obvious to him in a moment.

"Ah, Sofia." and even before Ed could say anything, he continued. "There is nothing between us, never was ..."

"But she's Martín ..."

"She's nothing to Martín. It was a barter for her. A bargain. A deal. A tool to get what she really wanted. She didn't even spend a day with him. She's not his mother, she never will be. She waived all her rights. "

Ed visibly calmed down. He squeezed Oswald's hand.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to suggest I didn't trust you. It's all stupid. She just said a few things that were embarrassing. She asked if I was your newest toy."

"I can assure you, it was no less embarrassing when I went to school for you last week and your cousin asked me that I'm your sugar daddy now." Oswald told him as he gently pocked the Rubik's Cube out of his son's mouth.

Ed laughed.

"Isabella just likes to get people nervous, to see their reaction." he explained and let Oswald turn his head toward him. He looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.

"I already wanted to ask, but what happened to you, darling?"

There was a red spot on Edward's forehead.

"Oh, that? Martín was bored whit his toy blocks and showed me how well he was aiming."

"Oh, is that true, Martín?" Oswald turned to his son. "Or not?"

Martín shook his head, the cube immediately fell out of his hands, as if it had never been there. The dog had already thrown himself at it.

"I could not deny that he is mine." Oswald sighed, seeing Martín's overly innocent expression.

"He's a talented kid. Just like his dad."

"Flattery, Mr.Nygma?" Oswald turned back to him and smoothed along the line of Ed's face, from his chin all the way to his forehead, where the spot was.

"It's not flattering to tell the truth, Mr. Cobblepot."

"Does it hurt?"

"It's nothing."

Oswald shrugged. "Too bad, I would have liked to kiss it to make it better."

Edward's eyes lit up.

"You know what, I think it hurts, it really, really hurts. Only you could help to abolish the pain." he said quickly and Oswald snorted amusedly at this, but he leaned down and breathed a kiss on the man's forehead. Then to the tip of his nose and finally to his lips. The latter lasted a little longer.

Ed sighed happily.

"Better?"

"Better."


End file.
